On 14 Apr 99, at 17:56, Brian.santos wrote: > Yes, you need a data switch. You can buy this at any PC hardware > store. There are three basic problems with this advice: 1. Monitor connections are not really intended to be plugged and unplugged while the PC is on. A KVM switch includes protective circuitry to allow this. A "data switch" generally does not. 2. A couple of the lines in a VGA connection carry information about the monitor to the VGA card. If you boot a PC while the monitor is switched away, the video card may initialize to a mode that the monitor can't support. [Admittedly, this is probably only a problem for those with monochrome VGA monitors, and those are fairly rare.] KVM switches generally replicate these signals from the monitor back to all of the attached PCs. 3. I have not seen a "data switch" with 15-pin VGA connectors (probably for reason 1 above...). I have seen them in 9-pin (you might be tempted to try to use these with an old MDA or CGA, but they're really intended for 9-pin ("AT") serial connections), 25-pin (serial/parallel), and Centronix (printer) configurations. David G The PCBUILD web site always needs good submissions. If you would like to contribute to the website, send any hardware tech tips or hardware reviews to: [log in to unmask]